You know, when I posted this stuff, I thought I was being a "do
gooder," providing some insight for a few who may not have the
information.

I didn't suggest you get the loans, and I don't have the specific
answers to the questions two of you have now offered me in return for
making the information known, but I do have a comment or two.

First, unless you're born beautiful or rich or just mighty damn lucky,
you don't get something for nothing in this life.  In a free-market
economy, you pay for what you get and what the market will bear.  If
there were not people--sometimes people from other lands--who would be
willing to pay these high educational fees, would they stay so high?  I
rather think not.

If you get a student loan, why should it be different than any other
loan you take?  It has to be repaid, or you default on it and your
credit--though I'm told student loans cannot be defaulted upon because
so many previously did so, and the big bucks that fund managed to lobby
to keep them sacred.

Then, I guess, you exercise some prudence in the loans for which you
apply and the discipline after which you chase.  I don't imagine
museums all of a sudden paid low.  Did any who seem so disenfranchised
with the student loan fees check out what the profitability margins
would be of their desired profession before securing them?

More than that, I guess, as I pass around the crackers to go with this
whine, the commentary thus far hits on a rather sour note for me.

Why?  Well, I've been to school twice, twenty years apart, to get my
education, and in no instance was it by loan or subsidized by parents.
I paid for my education, and I worked to do so.  The first time around,
I carried 16 units, and worked 40 hours a week as a nurses' aide, at
minimum wage, cleaning up human feces.

The second time around, twenty years later, though my company offered
educational assistance, I didn't take it because my education is my
responsibility, and I own those grades, purely and simply.  In
addition, my company cannot deny me the ability to take any course I so
choose because it was "uneconomical" to them to do so.  I earned dual
majors, working full-time, single parenting, volunteering about 250
hours per year, and maintained a 3.65 GPA.

This is not about me.  It's about economics.

Yes, I know that college is expensive, and regrettably, we live in a
society that is requiring more and more to go for higher education (you
know, like supply and demand,  perhaps using gasoline prices for
illustrative purposes).  If people will pay, the costs will be higher,
and so it goes.

By the same token, if you won't work for menial wages, there are 10
college graduates behind you, with student loans to pay off, that will.

It's a vicious cycle.

I understand your concerns about student loans.  However, think of them
as just another option to getting the golden ring.  They're a bitch and
a half to payback, especially when starting out, but if you have no
scholarship, no Sugar Daddy, and no great societal sponsor backing you,
it may be the only way to rise above.

I'm sorry that life is hard.  It just is . . . and, after 46 years of
it, I can't say with any conviction that it gets easier.  Life is hard,
you have to make sacrifices, you have to work hard.

There is no Easy Street.







--- John Martinson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> And then....how do you get rid of the large,
> enormous student loans? <smiles>
> John Martinson
>

===
Indigo Nights
[log in to unmask]

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